Broken Bonds
by Faded Classic
Summary: Ten times soulmates didn't get their happy endings. Ten times they lived with a piece of their heart missing. Collection of oneshots, various ratings. Ranges from humor to angst.
1. i: as always

_AN: Written because I can. ^^_

_Disclaimer: I don't own the Night World series. But if anyone knows where my copy of the third volume went, I'll love you forever and ever._

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**– + Broken Bonds + –  
~ Lethe likes to toy with human boys. But unlike her cousin, she's never gone too far. Until now. ~**

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i. as always

When Lethe wakes up for school, she thinks it will just be an ordinary day. And why not? After all, her day starts off as normal as always.

She gets out of bed at six forty-five in the morning, as always. She stumbles into the shower half-asleep, as always. She blow dries her hair fifteen minutes later, as always. She eats some breakfast – a light golden toast with strawberry jam – as always. She goes up to her room and dresses for school, as always.

As she stands in front of the mir ror with her swinging curtain of silky coal hair pulled back out of her face, her violently amethyst eyes narrow in concentration as she focuses on securing the small obsidian clasp around her neck. Hanging down it is a minute black dahlia, forever immortalized by a little spell her mother performed. Of course, no one will ever understand the importance of this diminutive charcoal-petaled flower. Well, no one who will see it, that is. The Night People would understand what it meant, but not the… humans she goes to school with.

She is proud of the hanging emblem that marks her as a witch, because she _is_ one. She is Circle Midnight, as her mother was, and her mother before her. She is Lethe Amisi, the _river of forgetfulness_, sole remaining heiress of the Amisi family who are both famous and infamous, renown for the many artifacts their family as a whole has created. And though her mother clicks her tongue and shakes her head at her daughter, who she thinks is not ruthless enough to be a Midnighter, she doesn't raise her voice. Just because she isn't as devotion-spell-happy as her cousin, Lethe thinks, doesn't mean she belongs to Circle Twilight, or, Goddess forbid, Circle _Daybreak_. She can reel in others without the help of magic, thank you very much, and it's because of that natural power that she has no enemies at her school.

Her chauffer drives her to school, and when she exits, she is immediately accosted by a sea of adoring followers. As always.

She's in first block, now, and bored out of her mind. She sits there, gazing out the window with her head propped up, looking for the world a beautiful and uninterested marble statue. People are staring, and she knows it. It's a feeling she revels in, a feeling that's constant everywhere she goes, as always.

And then the door opens.

There are footsteps, yes, but there isn't just one pair. It's two – and she's never heard that happen before. It's very strange, she muses. There's the heavy, clunking steps of their Trig teacher, but there is a different pair, light and airy and carefree, stepping in time. The door opens, and the heavily mustached face of their professor appears, shadowed by a different face.

She stares, and almost gasps. There, behind Mr. Gruen, is the most beautiful boy she's ever laid her eyes on. Well, most beautiful human boy, anyways. He's got a warm face and a swimmer's body, and while it's nothing compared to the unearthly beauty of Night People, it's phenomenal compared to the others here. He looks her way, and his gold-flecked hazel eyes focus on her deep lavender ones. She can't keep her gaze off of him. People are shocked that the Ice Queen Lethe, who toys with guys and has every boy in the whole school just waiting for full, glossy lips to form the syllables of their name and the flick of her fingers, the school's aloof and cool princess, is actively taking an interest in the new boy. He catches her eye, and her lips quirk up just a quarter of an inch. He mirrors her expression with a tiny smirk of his own.

It's that exact moment Lethe decides that she's going to keep this new boy.

She zones out while Mr. Gruen drones on and on about whatever they were learning that day, the boy's name rebounding and echoing in her head.

_Julian._

– **e**_n_jo**_y_** it **w**_h_i_**l**_e _i_t** l**_a_s_t**s**_ –

Lethe balls her hands into fists, nails digging into the elegant porcelain skin of her palms. _How dare he!_

She's Lethe Amisi, Amazon-of-the-Island, descended from the legendary forger Chalcedony Amisi, creator of the Cup of Lethe, with a family line that goes back nearly has far back as the Harmans. She is the most beautiful girl in the school and possibly the whole district, the most sought-after girl in the whole school. She wants _him_.

And he has the gall to go and _turn her down!_

Even though it was totally private and his lips are completely sealed about the occasion, it doesn't change the fact that this… this… this _human_ has decided he wants nothing to do with her, despite being her current favorite and being selected out of the hundreds of other boys.

And he tells her _no_.

She's selfish and self-serving, yes, but when she puts her mind to something she accomplishes it no matter what the consequences. When she digs her claws in, they don't come out until she's caught her prey. She's got her eyes on the raven-haired Julian, and she will do whatever it takes to get him.

At whatever price.

– _t_**h**e **_s_**ee_d_ **i**_s_ **s**_o_w**_n_** –

She goes to her cousin.

Even though she's sworn _never_ to ask Blaise for any help concerning guys, not after the whole Randy incident. Her cousin is beautiful and wild and unpredictable, not to mention unspeakably cruel. She's broken the minds of all her boys, willing or not. A true Midnight witch, as her mother is fond of saying.

But when push comes to shove, there is no one else better than her at devotion spells and binding spells. Her cousin is simply the best there is.

Well, there is her cousin Tanith, but… well, Tanith is a Twilighter, now, and she is weak. She simply renounced all those spells once she had broke the mind of her boy back then. Most likely she would chase her out if she even got around to mentioning using one of the spells. Not to mention report it to her mother, who would be terribly upset that she would even need help.

So. Blaise it is.

– _t_**a**k**_e_** a _b_**i**t_e **d**_a_r_**l**_i_n_**g**_ –

"It's simple," Blaise had said, and Lethe believed her.

All she had to do was get Julian alone. Put the delicate chain she had forged around his neck. It would immobilize and knock him out long enough for her to perform the risky little spell that sapped away at his will to keep on refusing her.

It was so easy.

Julian is a sweet and generous boy. He is the kind to stop and help old ladies carry their bags and walk across the road. There is no way he will be able to ignore a sexy brunette who lost a precious family heirloom, the only thing she had left of her deceased father. And he can't.

They walk into the lightly forested grove behind the school, Lethe making a show of her worry and heartbreak with some tears rolling down her cheeks.

They stand like that for a while, Julian rummaging around the leaves while she pretends to be searching on the other side. She is biding her time, waiting for him to lift it up and tell her he has found it. Then it will start to muddle his senses long enough for her to get him to put it on. She will perform the spell, and he would be completely hers.

"Hey, Lethe, I found it." Right on cue.

But the strange thing is, he is reacting like normal. No slowing of the senses, nothing to show that he is being affected by the charms put around it. It would work once it went around his neck, though, she knows that. So she improvises.

"Oh Godde – " she cuts herself off just before she says Goddess. It won't do to make him suspicious. "Thank you so much, Julian! I don't know what I would have done if I lost it."

She is right next to him, now, and grabs the intricate golden thread in her hands. And then she does what her subconscious has been screaming at her to do ever since he walked into the classroom a week ago.

She kisses him.

Her arms thrown around his broad shoulders, she scrabbles to clasp the dainty collar-like object around his neck as she kisses him with everything she has. There is a silvery mist rolling across the ocean of her mind – when did she get there? – and it is moving toward him. It nearly reaches him, too before a shining golden barrier erects itself and halts all process.

The charm is working. Perfect.

Moving quickly, she detaches herself and starts murmuring the incantation under her breath. In her haste, she stumbles over a word, but she pays it no notice as she hurries on. Already, his eyes are looking steadily clearer.

Rushing through the last verse of the spell, she holds her breath as a vivid red aura-thread starts to wind its way around him, tying his body into her hand. It is working, and soon Julian Rivera with his gorgeous good looks and exotic eyes will never decline her wishes again.

That was, until, wind starts howling. The red thread begins to unravel, only to squeeze tighter. It coils about Julian's stiff body, twisting tighter and tighter before it shatters. She only has time to catch a glimpse of his horrified stare before the metallic hazel eyes she adores go completely and utterly blank.

He is dead.

She gazes at the slumped body, looking for the world it was peacefully sleeping, and shrugged. Blaise hadn't warned her that it would cause death if failed, but then, Julian was the exception to so many other things, not the least of them her natural charisma. Lethe turns gracefully, and walks out of the clearing. Already the euphoria and fireworks that he set off in her are fading. He was a fling, she decides, a fleeting obsession. Nothing more, really.

She doesn't notice the gaping hole in her heart that Julian had slowly began to fill start to gape wider.

– _**a**_n_d_ **d**_o_n'**_t _**l_o_**o**_k_ **a**_**w**_a_**y**_ –

When her mother finds out about his demise, the first thing she does is confront her daughter to see what her reaction to this is.

She goes up to Lethe's room, and finds the girl getting ready for school, brushing out her long, glittering hair. Not a speck of black is on her excluding her emblem. Avalon Amisi can not be more pleased – and confused – by her daughter's attitude. After all, it was just a few days ago that she had been chattering nonstop about the little human boy.

"Lethe, darling, all you alright?"

Her daughter, her pride and joy, turns around and faces her with a cold and distant look on her face, and utters nine words.

"Of course, mother. He was only a human, after all."

She turns back to the mirror. Avalon smiles to herself. Her daughter is a true witch of Circle Midnight, a proper Night Person. Maybe she will accept Hunter Redfern's proposal, after all.

Lethe continued to brush out her hair. She doesn't notice the emptiness in her heart, the jagged missing piece in her soul. She doesn't notice her expression getting colder, her voice flatter, her eyes blanker. She can't miss what she never really had. Her life goes on, as always.

The thin and frayed silver thread snaps without her even noticing it.

– f**o**_r _**t**_h_i_**s**_ i_s_ **t**_h_e _e_**n**d –

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Well, my latest brainchild is finished. For now, considering I have about nine more to go. Stupid fanfiction editing thing. It won't let me center the middle part. Bleh.

_Love it? Hate it? Think it should be burnt as an offering to the god of bad fanfiction? Leave a review, please._

_~Hallow_


	2. ii: one last song

_AN: Because I love doomed romances. XP_

_Disclaimer: I don't own the Night World series. I'm still missing my copy of the third volume. If L.J. Smith was dead, she'd be rolling around in her grave because of this._

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**– + Broken Bonds + –**  
**~ They'd locked eyes once, that siren of a boy and seductress of a girl. Then they'd turned away and the spell was broken. And neither of them truly understood why they felt so alone afterwards. ~**

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**_ii. one last song_**

Sharalyn Dale slips through the crowd of warm bodies, taking in the scene of smoky air and hazy lighting. She normally wouldn't be caught dead here, in this vermin center, but she has some important news to pass on to some of her contacts. _Sacrifices must be made, I suppose_, she thinks, her thoughts laced with annoyance. It's dark and entirely too _loud_, here, and she just doesn't understand how the vermin can actually stand to willingly hang around a place like this, but they do. Her head is pounding, and she's not sure how much more her poor, abused eardrums can _take_, and all she can do is just wish they would _shut up_. _God, it's awful here_, she thinks to herself, and wrinkles her nose as a man staggers past her, stone drunk. His breath smells like sour vomit, and she's not entirely sure that that's just a coincidence.

Of course, that's just her.

She weaves in and out of the twisting mass of bodies, searching for those molten silver eyes. She's been waiting at their meeting spot for an hour; she isn't going to wait for that lazy bastard any longer. Hunter Redfern has assigned her to this duty, and this duty alone. No obnoxious little miscreant is going to take it away from her, pureblooded lamia and heir to the Silvius family line be damned. He's always been an arrogant little brat, Shan, and barely does anything other than party and sleep with other girls.

She prefers _Ash_ over him.

_Speaking of Ash,_ she thinks, _what the hell is he doing right now? One night I see him out partying at the Black Iris, the next it's like he dropped off the face of the Earth_. She's mildly surprised at his latest actions, but not totally, because Ash is wild and unpredictable and as flighty as the wind. He's the one who changed her into a vampire – she was 'interesting,' he had said, and Hunter agreed with him. It must have been the fact that no one had been able to weasel their way into her mind, not even when she was human. It had been a great asset to the gang she was working with, one who had been comprised of Night People and humans who knew about the Night World. It was also probably the only reason he and the others who had gone to destroy the group had let her survive.

It was a bit grating, at first, to be told you're alive because a boy has a fleeting interest in you. But beggars can't be chosers, so Sharalyn had decided living because of someone's whim was better than not living at all.

She watches the vermin part around her, unconsciously reacting to her subtle aura of danger and grace of a predator. Mentally, she scoffs at them – they are so weak, so foolish. She just can't believe that barely a year ago, she was just like that. Now she is forever fifteen, eternally frozen in time. And she loves it.

So, here she is, flitting like an auburn shadow throughout the masses. All for the sake of some information. _It had better be good,_ she grumbles mentally.

She searches and searches and searches, until she realizes she can't find Silivius and is starting to attract attention. She gives a fake smile to the vermin who look at her with dark looks or concerned glances. Of course, there are the occasional lust-filled ones, too, but they don't exactly count. She does what she does best, and blends in. Because she was turned so recently and her disgust of vermin is so clear and ringing and absolutely true, she is the best for these types of missions. The older made vampires just don't have what it takes to infiltrate while acting as a vermin, because they all are just, well… too _old_. They garner too much suspicion, and aren't exactly that subtle. Then, lamias aren't the best either. Too jumpy, too excitable, to be trusted in an environment with so many vermin. Lamia vampires, predators from birth, don't exactly get the chance to learn how to act like a normal human. Nor are they able to tear their eyes away from the young, healthy blood flowing in through those beautiful human necks, or keep their attention long enough to find what they need to. They would throw the mission to seduce and score some hot-blooded – literally – vermin, male or female. New made-vampires are needed for these, and she is absolutely the best out of all of them.

She forces herself to _stand still_, for God's sake, and not attract anymore attention than she's garnered. Outwardly, she's a beautiful and normally haughty princess letting herself loose tonight. Inwardly, the sparkling eyes and gorgeous features masks the seething rage she feels bubbling up in her at each ongoing minute she can't find Shan Silvius. She wants to _leave_, dammit, she doesn't want to stay here any longer than she has too. Against her will, it's bringing up memories she buried of her past as a hu – _vermin_. _Vermin, dammit!_ Even just _standing_ here is crushing the mentality she strove to build. She almost called them humans! That's a sure sign something's wrong.

She's growing more and more anxious by the minute. Distracting herself from the memories, she decides to pretend to search for Silvius. Only – she's not pretending to dance, she is. She curses when she realizes that her feet and head and arms and body are falling back into old rhythms she used to dance to back when she was hu – _vermin_. When she was a _vermin_. _Oh God, this is not good_, she thinks.

But she can't stop the memories from coming anymore than she can stop her hips from swinging and head from tossing. There – twelve and going to her first school dance with her old best friends. There – thirteen, shrieking at a horror movie at a sleepover. There – thirteen and a half, feel a rush of euphoria-tainted adrenaline shoot through her body as she did her first job for the gang. There – fourteen and giddy, preparing for her first date with her boyfriend, Jack. There – still fourteen and making out in the back of a movie theater. There – her fifteenth birthday and Kellie's older sister fixing her hair and make up for her play performance.

So she dances.

She dances and dances and dances, to the songs of the amateur musicians who really aren't that bad, remembering her human years and channeling them through like a rush of rapids. She knows she'll have to end this sometime, go back to being a Night Person, but she doesn't care, because right now she's dancing out her dreams before anyone catches them and tears them to shreds.

A wolf-whistle rings out, and the spell is broken. She opens her eyes, and the magic cracks into little pieces as she remembers where she is and why she's here. Her heart clenches, and she realizes that she doesn't have much longer, and she needs to find Silvius _now_. Going back to the crowd, she ducks and twists and snakes her way through the river of pe – vermin, looking for the errant lamia boy, who probably has his tongue stuck down a vermin's throat, as well as his fangs. She finds the stairway, and quickly sprints up the flight of steps. Maybe this will give her an edge. She'll be able to scan out that damn boy easier, that's for sure.

She's reached the balcony, now, and she's scanning the crowd below. For the first time, she notices that there's a calling for her. It's so faint, she can barely hear it in the silence and shadows of the balcony with her vampiric ears. No, wait – it's a mental call. Not a physical one. Almost inadvertently, her eyes drift toward the stage.

It's a new band, she idly notices, and they're probably the best of the ones that have gone. Her eyes drift to the lead singer with an electric guitar slung around his shoulders, and her breath catches.

_He's beautiful_, is the first thought that drifts into her mind. He's probably a year or two younger than her – he looks like it. His hair, though somewhat long, is raven black and looks so soft. She wants to pet it for some strange, unknown reason. She doesn't even know what she's doing. _He's_ vermin_,_ the logical, vampiric part of her mind whispers. _The only thing that's good about him is his blood. Get it together, girl!_ It hisses, repulsed by the idea that a _vermin_ could inspire such reactions in her. _Oh, shut up,_ the soft, human voice that she tries so hard to smother replies. _Let's just watch him for a while. No harm, no foul. Besides, he's cute._

She feels her mind reaching out, straining to reach his. She leans forward a bit with it, too, just enough for her face to peer out of the heavy black drapes. She watches him, the way his face is so closed off and controlled, the way his body is so expressive. His silky hair dips in front of his face, obscuring his eyes from view. She used to find this so repulsive, even back when she was a vermin, but on him, it just looks… right. Not good, not bad, just… right. Like it belongs there, shielding this skinny, oddly fragile-looking boy from the prying eyes of the world.

She likes that. She's not sure why, but she feels kind of possessive of this strange boy, in ways she can't even begin to understand. Like how she wishes the blonde girl in the fourth row with the large chest would stop staring at him like he's her next dinner. Or how she wants to rip the head off of the redhead off to the left who has some very _graphic_ thoughts of what she'd like to do with him. She isn't sure she wants to, either.

She's still watching him from the safety of the balcony when his face snaps up to her. She gasps – actually _gasps_ – at the site.

His eyes are blue. Blue as in blue-blue, and she can't really trust the English language to contain an adequate word for them. They're indescribable – twin pools of iridescent light, snapping with a crackly light, not exactly fire, but bright nonetheless. Electric whirlpools, that's what they are, dangerous and burning and soul-capturing all at once. She… for once in her life, she has no words.

She _feels_ their mind touch, though, and suddenly, flashes of a poor, rundown house appear. There's a sickly, dying mother, and a father who drowns his sorrow in alcohol and covers it with angry words. She sees a trashy neighborhood and a little boy standing in the midst of it, with dark hair and blue eyes. _That's him,_ she thinks dazedly. _That's him as a child._

More memories flash through her mind. Elementary, where his patched clothes and shabby looks were common. Meeting three other guys and becoming friends. Learning how to play in an old, abandoned music room. Becoming a band. She sees everything that happens in his life with quick and startling clarity. A small part of her hazy mind idly realizes that the boy isn't younger than her, as she thought. He's actually half a year older.

But she end up thinking, _Oh god. Oh my god. A _human_. I'm having a freaking out of body experience with a _human_. Shit, Silvius better get here soon. I don't want to explain to Hunter why I'm obsessed with a vermin._ Because she can see it, in her mind's eye, what he would do to her.

She snaps out of it, and sees the boy continue to stare at her with wide, startled eyes. Nobody else notices, and even though his voice wavers a bit on the notes, he keeps on singing, only his eyes betraying what he's truly thinking. She wishes she knew his name.

And then he looks away, and their connection is snapped, leaving her vaguely disappointed. She _liked_ it. It was nice. She thinks it would have been nice if it lasted longer.

Then she shakes herself out of her daze, a part of her bemused at how the thoughts of the mission had so quickly fled her head. _Oh. The mission._

She quickly returns to the shadows, searching for the annoying boy she came in here to find. She can't help but wonder if he slipped out in the eternity she was drowning in those cyaneous eyes. She glances quickly at her watch, and is startled to find not even ten seconds had passed since she fell into the vermin's (human's) mind.

Well.

She finds Shan at long last, in a smoky corner with a tipsy girl, kissing her and biting her alternately. He whispers something in the shell of her ear, and she giggles. Storming down the stairs, she strides over to him, _very_ angry that he made her wait two hours simply because he wanted to chat up a dumb slut. She towers over him like a figure of doom as he pales in growing recognization and remembrance.

Not saying a word, she drags him out. The boy at the microphone is shunted to the back of her mind as she rails on him about punctuality and reminds him just why leaving a girl waiting is one of the biggest mistakes a guy could ever make. She leaves with the information, and when she gives it to Hunter, he doesn't try to force his way her mind like he always does. She goes home, and her encounter with the vermin (human) boy is shoved into the dark recesses of her mind, and she slowly forgets about their strange encounter and his extraordinary eyes. And when she continues on with her life…

She can't help but feel she's missing something.

**– because the peasent and the knightress –**

Leigh Radcliff is performing at a nightclub when he sees the angel that will haunt his steps forever.

He's singing and strumming, and the crowd is going wild. Not that he can see through the hair slipping over his face and covering his eyes. He feels like his gaze is being drawn up, and he sees an auburn-haired teenager with pale skin and striking looks. When their gazes meet, he feels her mind.

It sounds like those cheesy romance books his sister Paulie reads, but it's true. He sees things about that girl he's sure she wouldn't share with anyone. Her highs and lows, her accomplishments, her failures. Everything about her is bared to his mind in the seconds he looks her in the eyes. It feels like time has stopped. He keeps on singing, but his mind remains on her.

A thought appears in his head. _Sharalyn._ That must be the girl's name. He likes it. He tries it out when he's home and staring at the cracked plaster ceiling, loving the way it rolls off his tongue. _Sharalyn. Sharalyn. Sharalyn._ It's a beautiful name, and it fits the salient girl perfectly. He doesn't know the meaning, but it _sounds_ right. He likes it, too.

The next time he performs at the club, he looks up into the balcony, but can't find her. Same as with the next, and the next, and the next. She fades into the back of his mind, eventually, not forgotten but not remembered. And on the nights he goes back to the club, even though he's rich and famous now…

He can't help but feel he's missing something.

**– never get their happy endings –**

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The second installment in my little series. How I love my baby. ^^

_I hate the editing here. Bleh._

_Thanks to all of you who reviewed and favorited me. If you didn't... well, there's a button that's calling your name. Hint, hint._

_~Hallow_


	3. iii: red dancing slippers

_AN: Because even murdering bastards turn into stalkers around faerie princesses. And I've been listening to too much Owl City._

_Disclaimer: Not mine, not by a long shot. __Am still looking for my third book. Pooh._

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**– + Broken Bonds + –**  
**~ She flew across the stage on those red dancing slippers, and he couldn't help but be entranced. But she doesn't have eternity, and he realizes it too late. ~**

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iii. red dancing slippers

It's January, and he's standing in an elaborate and intricately carved hall.

Declan Laurence has been a vampire for… about three hundred years, now, and since the beginning, but not once has he felt the need to do something like this. He's always been fine with the blood of the willing girls on the streets. Unlike _some_ people (cough_Peter_cough), he isn't that picky about whomever the blood comes from, so long as its _blood_. But here he is, at door of this rich and beautiful hall. It only takes a few charming words and a little bit of some mental prodding, and the woman lets him in.

He doesn't know why he's here, really. Does he suddenly have some kind of irrational craving for young, beautiful female blood? It's definitely not for sex. He prefers not to do that with human girls, simply because they are so fragile. Unlike the other vampires, he's got _some_ sense of decency. Even though he is a murdering bastard.

The lights dim while he's ruminating. He sits in the shadows, and he watches the humans – children, really – leap and twist and twirl all across the tan flooring under the silvery light. Most of them are girls around fifteen to seventeen, in the beginning of their dancing prime, old enough to attract appreciative glances but young enough to awe the audience with their skill. It's before the aches and pains set in, before joints lock, and before beauty is lost amidst a sea of wrinkles and the deep, shadowy circles of exhaustion. He is still standing, leaning against the wall that is covered by the dark with his arms folded over his chest, unconsciously rubbing his long, stake-given scar he got in a battle with one of those vampire hunter girls. She was tough, strong, and _good_ – it was only a miracle and a few centuries of seniority that enabled him to get away with only a semi-fatal wound, one he nearly died from anyways. Still.

His attention is drawn to the stage framed with heavy red-and-gold brocade curtains. It's another dancer, yes, but this one is different. This one is small and almost painfully thin, with feathery pale gold hair that seems to float, and big hazel-amber jewels for eyes set in a soft, light-skinned face. She's wearing a simple white dress, one that is so obviously home made, but it suits her tiny frame. He's not sure that others even make costumes in her sizes. She's beautiful, in a pure, childish sort of way, and he can't help but admire that.

She looks like a child angel, yes, but that's not what captures him. It's the way she moves, dancing slowly and twirling gracefully in time and mood to that poignant melody which is playing. He sees the movements are, to her, not simply movements to go through. She flows through them so expressively, it's like she's taking all the grief and sadness in her and expelling it out in the song. Which is ridiculous, he thinks, because she's too young to have experienced the tragedies of life. It might have been common back when he was a child, but it isn't now. Not for pretty blondes in worn slippers who dance like Terpsichore reborn, not for pale and tiny little girls who are only missing a halo and wings.

As her song goes on and eventually ends, he can't help but wonder why she has such sad, sad eyes.

_– the little wind up ballerina –_

It's February, and he finally spots her again.

This time, he sees her off the dance floor. She's at the market with an older woman he pegs as her older sister, dressed in a small white coat and little plaid dress with matching white tights that disappear into miniature tan boots. She's still pale. She's still petite. She's still abnormally thin.

She's still got those haunting eyes.

It's different, though, because she smiles and laughs and her previously white face has a little pink hue to it, what with her flushed from what he would assume was happiness. She holds the older woman's hand as they weave their way through the crowd, talking to each other in rapid-fire Russian – he thinks – as they chatter on and on about anything and everything. He notices how despite the fact that their coats and tights and boots are threadbare, despite the fact that they have barely anything in their cart, they look happy. The older girl gestures to various items that he can only guess are supposed to be for her, but the little girl shakes her head and laughs. He can see how the older woman gets a pinched and pained look every time she looks down at the girl at her side when she thinks the child isn't looking. He also sees how the child winces in pain or shivers whenever she's absolutely _sure_ the other isn't glancing at her. The girl takes off her coat when they are halfway through the store, and he sees the way the material is a little too tight to be new, how the cuffs and knees are a little too frayed. How the hand poking out of the sleeve is a bit too skinny for just a girl who dances a lot.

Goddess, but he's never noticed how _tiny_ she is. It's scary, actually. At first, he guessed that she was seven, eight. But she's so obviously older.

He wonders what other secrets the pixie-like girl is hiding behind that sheer curtain of radiant aureate bangs. It's evident to him now that there is simply no way to know everything about this girl at first sight. This is book whose cover needs to be not only opened, but read again and again and again in order to understand the least of it.

_– she twirls and twirls and twirls –_

It's March, and he's got a name to match the face now.

He goes through his old newspapers that he stocks up near the fireplace in his vast, sprawling house, focusing on the articles that take place around Larkin, the city that holds the large bargain store he spotted the two in. He searches and searches and searches, until he finally finds a picture in the _Crime_ section.

There it is. The headline is,** BOY DIES IN GANG SHOOTING**.

He scans through the rest. _Alexander Demidova, 14, dies in a brutal gang shooting... five bullet holes... dead on arrival... survived by his sibling Anastasia Demidova and __Julia Demidova__... _It contains a picture of a handsome, tired-looking boy with fine blonde hair and sad eyes, his face identical to the girl's – no, Julia's – by everything but the color of his eyes. Where her's are an unique amber color, his are bright blue, sharp and piercing, like a ragged shard of eyes.

And, given the inaccuracy of the press when it comes to name, he has no doubt that that isn't even her name.

But he's read everything he needs to know for the first step in unveiling the little _aingeal_ and viewing her in full.

_– and spins her web of magic –_

It's April, and he knows her address.

He's found out what her real name is, too. It's 'Yulia' – they were close, but not entirely right.

But the residency, it surprised him, actually. The fact that she lives in an apartment building is shocking, though he doesn't know why. Was he expecting her to live in a mansion, with her threadbare clothes and home made outfits? He doesn't know why, but for some reason he feels like it's just not fair that such a vibrant little girl should live stifled in such a place.

He looks up at the antediluvian building, with its tattered shutters covering barely-there windows, ratty curtains pulled across the thin glass. The building itself is old and mossy, cracked and crumbling in parts. Gazing up at the stocky and perilous building, he can't help but be reminded of the homes the girls he grabs for a quick snack. It's strange how similar she is to those painted girls, the ones who so desperately need the money he gives them for letting him feed on them. He has no doubt, now, that she has the same problem. Just how is her sister paying for her to attend classes? He knows that if they had that kind of money, they would move into another house.

He stands, and stares for a moment. Then he turns and walks away.

_– to catch the one who knows –_

It's May, and he's in the alley facing the back of the building.

He stands in the shadows, leaning against a wall with his arms crossed as she leaps and turns in midair. He can't help but be reminded of how the first time he laid eyes on her. It's so similar, this setting, to the first.

He looks at her shining face, still skinny and pale but smiling brightly, and can't help but feel that he isn't in the same place he was before. It's like he stumbled through a forest glen onto a little faerie princess dancing and weaving her magic through the tall trees. Then he blinks, and he's back in a grey concrete lot with a small plot of flowers blooming to the side. But he can't change the feeling that he crossed something he shouldn't have.

It was still beautiful.

_– that she's waiting and waiting –_

It's June, and he's standing in the alley again.

Alright, so not the _alley_ alley. He's standing in that concrete lot, peering through the slats on the window. And _yeah_, it's pretty much stalking, and that's illegal in all fifty states, but he can't help it. He just needs to see what her reaction is.

Yulia opens the brown, nondescript package with light and quick fingers, the way she does everything. And when she removes the cardboard and bubble wrap, she stares into it and yells something he doesn't know in Russian, but it gets the other woman running into the room. She pulls out the delicately engraved silver box, and simply stares at it, before she opens it, slowly, unlike the way she opened the larger package.

She gasps at the contents. Then, she pulls out the new clothes, and almost reverently sets them aside. She continues to do this with the slight jewelry and the stacks of bills until she gets to the very bottom. When she pulls out the soft and silky dance shoes, vivid crimson like a blooming rose, she gives out a cry of delight and handles them with more care and reverence a priest would handle a bible. She looks at the other woman, and in that brief moment her face is turned to the window, he can see the tears glimmering in her eyes.

_– for someone for something –_

It's July, and he's watching her again.

He sends packages regularly now. Nothing as much as the first time, just occasionally new clothes or bills of money. Stuff he thinks that she will need and appreciate. A new pillow, some craft items, games and toys… That sort of thing.

Going out to look at the little garden she's planted, he looks at her bent over the soil, planting the tiny flower seeds – so fragile, so powerful, so beautiful, just like here – into the ground, and hoping they will grow.

There is nothing much he can do but watch, for fear of the Night World finding out and crushing the little girl who brings so much to life or her mother with the moonstone eyes, but for now…

That is enough.

_– to see what only she sees –_

It's August, and the camellias have bloomed.

They aren't the flowers she had planted, no, but they were ones she brought to life anyways. They were wilting, dying, and she miraculously restored them to the state they would have been in if they hadn't been neglected, forgotten. Maybe it was science. Maybe it was a miracle.

Maybe it was Yulia.

The longer he spends with her, the more convinced he is that she's not one of God's angels – if they exist – and more of a faerie. Not a witch – no, she's too pure, too innocent – in nature at least – to be one, too hardy to be the Witch Child.

She's too full of life to be a Night Person, to be one of those ancient and forgotten races of death and cold. Too bright.

Too bright.

_– and she'll spin and spin and spin –_

It's September, and he hardly sees her anymore.

She goes to school, as every good human minor does. She sets out in a new sweater and her ever-present dress – not that she's wearing the same one each day. It's just that he's known – well, not really _known_, because that implies familiarity on both sides, so it's more like he's aware of her habits – her for nearly nine months, now, and not once has he ever seen her out of a skirt or dress, if you discount the spandex shorts she wears to practices under _another_ one of her dresses. He doesn't know why. Maybe it's just a family quirk. After all, the other woman is the same way, and they are practically mirror images of each other, not counting the eyes. Discounting the eyes, as always, because no matter how much she looks like others, her eyes are the one feature that can never be copied.

They are always changing tawny hues. One day they are tiger's eyes – the next the color of amber glass. It's another thing that's completely unique about her.

At school, they call her Princess, for her kind and lively attitude, as well as the way she dresses. Even though she's poor, and most people know it, she dresses neatly and cleanly, which is more than he can say for the others there. Some of those children are the type of humans that prompted the rest of his kind to label all humans as _vermins_.

But she comes back each day, and sits in front of the archaic desk, whose brethren were probably the poorer cousins of what Marie-Antoinette wrote on. She copies down every letter with a thin pen, her eyes narrowed and focused on the paper as she makes each stroke with terrifying preciseness.

It's when he catches himself watching those hands Declan realizes that he's completely obsessed with Yulia Demidova.

_– and whirl and whirl and whirl –_

It's October, and it's her mother's birthday.

It's a quiet celebration, he muses as he sits on his favorite perch and peers through slats. Just her and the woman who he – finally, finally – realizes is her mother. He was shocked at first. Stunned, surprised, astonished, astounded. With how young the woman – Anastasiya, not Anastasia – is, he never would have guessed.

He sends them another package, this one with a little extra one for the woman who held the name of the only other lady to hold him so fascinated.

_– because she will wait forever –_

It's November, and he is standing in the graveyard.

He first notices them saving the money he sends them back in August. It confuses him, but since when have the two Demidovas ever done anything along the way he thinks? Not once. They continue to surprise him, first by using the money to fix the place, second by donating some of the clothes to the couple next door and their five little girls. They never do the expected, so this should not be strange for him. But each time the packages come, he watches them take half the bills and tuck them away in a small, indiscreet part of their shelf. But the little girl takes them out, and the two of them dress in black for the first time in his memory.

He follows them down until they reach Larkin Cemetery, and when they pass that and reach a craftsman home, he is even more confused. But the big man with the bulging muscles help them carry a wrapped stone slab, and they turn to enter Larking Cemetery.

The brawny man gently unravels the string with more delicacy than Declan would have deemed him able of doing. Then Yulia removes a marker, and the man places down the gravestone where the small stone cross was barely seconds ago. Once they leave, he gets a good look at it.

_Aleksandr Demidova_  
_1994 – 2008_  
_Beloved Brother and Uncle_  
_May He Rest Forever In Peace_

Ah. It makes sense to him now.

_– for the only one who knows –_

It's December, and he is haunting the hospital.

She's sick, he knows that now. Before, he was so blinded by her beauty and vivaciousness to wonder why, exactly, was she steadily getting paler despite the amount of time she spent outside. Why, exactly was she still getting thinner despite the fact that they had enough money to live comfortably.

Why, exactly, her eyes were dimmer everyday.

She welcomes in visitors, telling them that she won't be here long, it's just a precaution, nothing bad is for sure. She'll be back with them in no time, of course, and she can't wait to audition for the talent show. She loves the flowers they brought her, the card was lovely, she's so flattered that they went through all of this trouble for here.

And in private, when she thinks she's alone, he sees that she just wants to break down into hysterics, cry for all she's worth. But she holds on and she stays strong, and clings to the belief that she'll _live_, despite what the doctors say about a deadly disease, almost never found in children, the second one they've seen in half a century with this, and one in a billion chance of survival.

She says she'll be out soon. He says that's a lie.

But it's one he desperately wants to believe.

_– where her spirit's flown –_

It's January, now, again, and he's back at the hall he first saw her, but she never comes back on the stage.

Her mother is in black and she's forever eleven, buried beneath her favorite tree with the crimson camellias she somehow grew adorning the simple marker of her grave. He sneaks a peek at her corpse. It's frozen in a close-eyed and peaceful expression, and he thinks all the gifts she never got but deserved, all the chances she never got to seizes, all of the places she never got to see, and all of the life she never got to live.

He notices they buried her in those red dancing slippers, a petite golden-silver angel in blood silk.

And when he leaves, he can't help but think that's just the saddest damn thing he's ever seen.

_– so she dances –_

_

* * *

_

_The third chapter is up, lovelies. It's gonna take me less than nine months – hopefully – to get the rest out. I'm gonna beat Octomom at this rate. Ooh, disturbing image. *bleh face*_

_Editing still sucks. Meh. Whatever. I'm high on chocolate, and life is good. Mostly._

_And what's this? 3 reviews? That's... that's just sad. I've updated this faster than normal for you, and this is the thanks I get? That's love, right there. *sarcasm*_

_To the three of you who did review, thankies. I iz loving you for it._

_Hallow_


	4. iv: apparatus

_AN: Because I want some **angst**, dammit._

_Disclaimer: Nope, not even close. Have found my third volume, though._

* * *

**– + Broken Bonds + –**  
**~ Mirror images on the opposite sides of the spectrum, that's what they were. It was too bad they were natural enemies, because you can only fight your instincts for so long. ~**

_**

* * *

**_

iv. apparatus

The first time she laid an eye on him was in a classroom on Mythological Creatures, a class she chose for the sake of easy As and convenience. The teacher was an idealistic idiot, the class was full of slackers and aspiring hard fiction writers, and it was the perfect place for Laurel to have time to herself, apart from her crazy lamia-supremacy-obsessed siblings who – coincidentally – also went to school here. She suspected it was more to make her miserable than it was because they actually wanted to learn and mix with the 'vermin'. But this was one class they weren't taking that she was, so she was alone and away from the crazies for an hour and a half. It was perfect.

Well, not quite. It would have been perfect if some of her secret friends were in the class, thus giving her someone to talk to and distract herself with. But no, they weren't there, so she was left alone to think.

The alone-ness – it happened quite often, actually. Her sisters – and her recently graduated brother who would be violent and icy one second and charming and crazy the next, and who could mood swing like nobody's business – were popular, in that cold, ruthless, terrifyingly overbearing way. Suffice to say, half the population of Helbridge High School worshipped the ground they walked on, and the other half feared for their lives as they constantly watched their backs. She didn't blame them. Being the baby of the family entitled her to all the coddling from the older, more motherly women at their sealed-in clan home, as well as giving her the sympathy of all the older males, but it also came with being the most watched-over and tortured child in the whole area, thanks to her domineering siblings. She quickly learned when to disappear subtly and when to flat-out run.

Still. The influence of her siblings, combined with the fact that she was nowhere near as bad as them, led the school to disregard, and in some cases subtly shun, her from their little circles. But she had made a small circle of friends – blood harem, she told her family, in an effort to get them to not destroy them. Vermin who were tolerated because she liked their blood. Even though, truthfully, they were the only people who gave her a second look after hearing her name, and as such became her friends. It was difficult, to say the least, but if running herself ragged to keep every one of her separate lives actually _separate_, she'd lie as much as she had too.

However, the fact remained that when she was alone. And when she was alone, she tended to think some not-very-uplifting things. Well, her thoughts would start out at what her siblings had done _now_, and then they'd follow along that road to worse things, more depressing thoughts. She'd even made a game of it, seeing how far down her little mental checklist of _Things I Hate About Myself_ before someone caught on and distracted her. Mostly the person who would snap her out of thinking that was Lilith, her closest sister in age, who was half a year older than her.

Her half-sister, actually, though, because her father… well, her father had two wives and a mistress, actually. Darach and Tara were his first wife's children, two years apart. Their mother ran off somewhere about seventeen years ago, desperate to escape the arranged marriage she had been forced into to create a truce between the two clans. Lilith was the second wife's daughter, who met a 'tragic' end by a 'vampire hunter' a few months after she was born. Even though everyone – except herself – had known the terrible fights they got into. One which was about her mother, a young girl from the recently destroyed Formosa clan, who started seeing her father without even knowing who he was, leading to herself being born just six months after Lilith. And her mother… well, she knew nothing about her mother, sans her name. Kelila Formosa, who she supposedly looked just like, if her father was to be believed. All Laurel knew that her mother disappeared after leaving her with her father.

Either way, Lilith would almost always be the one to disturb her thoughts. She was a powerful telepath, and didn't hesitate to use it on everyone inside their house but their father. And, more often than not, would mock her mercilessly for the fact that she hated that she was what she was.

She really did, honestly. Laurel wished nothing more that she had been born a human – she was suited for it, anyways. She wasn't as inhumanly gorgeous as her siblings. She didn't like the taste of blood. She was surprisingly clumsy for a vampire, not that that was saying much. She was disgusted at the attitude her kin had for other species. And she was a pathetically weak telepath from the clan known for their incredible mind-skills.

In short, she was the antithesis of what a vampire _should _be.

It was slightly ironic, really, that her father, who had had such high hopes for her, had given her one of the most powerful names a lamia could have. Here she was, the vampire-who-wasn't, given such a heavy and weighty name. Sad, really, because it was her mother's name and she'd never do it justice. Not when she was going down this kind of path.

Her musings of increasingly depreciative self-worth were cut short as the teacher walked in the door. Strange. She hadn't heard her coming. Ah, well, chalk that up to another one of her vampiric failures. She – the teacher, of course – turned to the board, and started to bring up the day's bellringer on the overhead, humming cheerily. Laurel scowled behind the curtain of, as her Greek myths-obsessed nerd of a teacher would say, stygian hair. She – Laurel – preferred to call it just black. The long inky strands fell in front of her face and pooled on the desk as she bent her head to write down the question and its answer in tiny print on the first page of the notebook, for the first day of this class. She heard the teacher's chirpy, peppy voice fill the room as if she were trying to infect it with sunshine and rainbows and happy bunnies, and glowered even harder.

Goddamn optimists.

**– let **_me_** tell **_you_** a **_story_** –**

The next time they had class, the cycle repeated all over again. Being the last block of the day, it was full of rowdy and twitchy kids, just waiting for the last hour and a half to pass by so they could get out of school. Some were even jumping the gun and trying to ditch class by signing the register that Tory – not Ms. Sommers – set out, and then leaving. Apparently, a freshly-graduated teacher felt awkward being called Miss by a bunch of kids about five, six years younger than her.

Laurel didn't care. She sat near the window in the corner and read her book.

About fifteen minutes after the bell rang, Tory came in, sunny blonde Californian hair falling loose of its rubber band, tan cheeks tinted pink, and breathing rather hard. The only thing that kept Laurel from wondering if she had just finished having a quick fuck was the fact that she was literally dragging all of the kids who decided to ditch class by the arms. Pushing them into the room, they went and slouched down in their chairs in the back, and she pulled up the newest bellringer. Laurel sighed almost imperceptibly as she set her novel down – it wasn't really good, but that didn't change the fact that she hated having her reading disrupted. The book, actually, was really stupid. The lady who wrote it thought that vampires freaking _sparkled_ in the sun! _Sparkle_. She thought they _sparkled_. What the fuck?

_Sparkling vampires_. What on earth was this world coming to?

She had some sick, masochistic urge to check out all the fiction books about vampires in the library, a while ago. For some strange reason, it was amusing to see what humans thought vampires were really like. Well, amusing in a twisted way, at least.

A soft knock on the door woke her up, making her jerk her head up seconds before it hit the desk. _Another_ failure. Her father was always going on about how important it was to be aware of her surroundings. Not that she really cared what the bastard thought, but it was crucial to her continued ridicule-less existence to make sure that anybody who wanted to frighten her couldn't sneak up on her, because she'd be _damned_ before she gave Darach the satisfaction of scaring her into screaming like a little girl, despite the fact that she _was_ one.

The teacher cleared her throat, facing the door. "Come in," she said.

Laurel looked up to see a tall and handsome brunette open the door, note in hand. He gave a miniature wave to the classroom, flashing a small smile that made half the girls in the room blush like crazy and giggle as they pulled their shirts a little tighter around their chest and pulled up their skirts or shorts just a bit more. Of course, these were the members of the second-cliques-in-command, the boy-crazy cheerleaders/dancers/drama queens/rich girls, who ruled the school directly after her sisters and their little group of Night People, who had the same reaction to any hot boy, so maybe it didn't count.

"Is this the Mythological Creatures classroom?" he asked in a low voice. It was deep and husky, the kind that, added with a rakish grin, was the kind that made girls fall head-over-heels and promised adventure, excitement, and danger. Still, she couldn't help but feel that something was missing. It reminded her of something, someone – but what? Who?

She'd wonder about the odd lilt to it later, she told herself. At the time, she was going to watch him, because hell, she might be a lamia vampire and Night Person, but she was still a girl and was going to enjoy the eye candy while it lasted.

"It is," the teacher said, with that same eternal exuberance that enabled her to hunt down each and every missing child from her classroom and still teach class. "What do you need?"

The boy smiled crookedly. He had a nice smile, Laurel decided. It wasn't a straight-forward, cheesy look desperately-popular people wore. It was an innocently devilish smile, the kind that, while it didn't light up a room, promised headline-worthy exploits, secrets that wouldn't be shared with just _anyone_, and a great time. It quirked at an angle to the side, like he knew something you didn't, but he wasn't going to tell you unless you figured it out yourself.

Well, damn. She didn't know that guys could pull of the Mona Lisa smile too.

"I'm a new student. I just started this year. This is my class, I think."

Tory sniffed disapprovingly. She did that a lot. It was one of her ways of showing her annoyance with you. It didn't really work, because those types of expressions were fit for middle-aged old ladies with a beak for a nose, little beady eyes, a stiffly pulled-back bun, and severe faces. Not for petite twenty-something, newly-graduated, pig-tailed blondes with big, ocean-blue eyes and a smatter of freckles scattered across small and delicate noses. "You couldn't have come to the first class like all the rest, could you?"

He didn't even seem daunted by the mild glare she was giving him, but maybe that was because Tory looked more like a stuffed toy trying to be mad but failing than actually angry. "Nope."

She sighed. "Do you at least have a reason?"

"Sorry to disappoint, but no exploding taxi cabs or high-jacked plane near-death experiences this time. I just moved here three days ago." His smile was still there, and he hadn't moved an inch from the doorway.

Tory sighed again. "Introduce yourself, then, and go sit down somewhere."

The boy walked into the room, finally, and strode to the front. "I'm Ramiel Brant. I just moved here from New Mexico. Nice to meet you." He walked down the rather wide row between desks to the back, and sat down.

Right next to Laurel.

**– of **_the_** child **_of_** glory –**

_Ramiel is so strange_.

That echoed throughout Laurel's mind as the days she had known him turned into weeks and the weeks turned into months. But despite his strangeness and his humanity, she _enjoyed_ spending time with him, more so than any of her other friends. He was… different, but in a good way. She just couldn't put a finger on it, but there was something about him that just _spoke_ to her. It could have been the way he talked, with his strange lilt and disarming tone. It could have been the way that his eyes flashed at random times, never changing color but never staying still. It could have been the harsh and tired edge he had that was reflected by all the shallow lines on his face, the way his mouth would frown more than smile, the way his eyes would narrow contemplatively. It could have been the way he reminded her of a hunter stalking his prey whenever he focused. It could have been the way he smirked and scowled but never smiled. It could have been the way his tall, proud body would slump every so often, like he was so tired of bearing the weight of the world (which was absolutely absurd, because he didn't, and she would have known if he did).

It could have been the way his easy grace and prowling strides reminded her of her more feral cousins, the ones who enjoyed the thrill of the hunt, or at least partook in it. He didn't even radiate Night Person to her, but she could be wrong, considering how terrible she was at those things. If she didn't know such things were a myth, she would have pegged him as a vampire hunter.

But that was ridiculous, because things like that didn't exist. Plus, he wouldn't be caught dead with her if he was. There was no way, right? Ramiel was just a human, even though he was such an extraordinary one. They'd sat together on the old, abandoned pier, and told each other secrets, and just like her, he hated what his family was forcing him to become. She told him stuff she would never dream of speaking to anyone, like how her siblings terrorized her, how much she loathed their compound, and how she wished that if she could get out, she'd like to be an artist. And, in return, he told her all about himself. She found out that he liked pink lemonade and hated the color red because it reminded him of fire. He didn't know what the rules of football were, even though he could tell her the entire and unabridged history of soccer, with dates and people and everything. He had a mile-long soft spot for chocolate-colored pretzels and gummi worms disgusted him. He was failing science even though he was an ace at math. He was just so… so… so _normal_. Absolutely nothing like those terrifying monsters from the horror stories.

And yet… why did it feel like she was trying to lie to herself?

**– **_who_** fell **_from_** the **_top_** of **_the_** world –**

It was just another day, and Laurel was walking back home, after finally making it out of school alive. And _yeah_, it was kind of strange, that Tory let their class out early – she _never_ does that. Tory likes to work them too the bell. But she had been called out of the classroom for a moment, and when she came back in, she had been somber and grim, like the happiness had been deflated out of her like a balloon. But Laurel didn't care, either way. When she left the room, she ignored the pitying glan – all right, who was she kidding. She _pretended_ to ignore it, but proceeded to wonder about it in her thoughts. It was strange, that Ramiel hadn't been there today – but he missed some classes every now and then, and who was she to tattle on him for playing hooky every so often?

Either way, she pondered the frown and it's meanings. Which led to one of her internal monologues.

She hated this. This, as in, being a vampire, of course. It was awful – whenever she drank blood, be it from willing donors or a wild animal, she felt terrible. And when she went home, she would look in the mirror. But in the mirror, looking back at her, was the worst kind of Hollywood monster – the beautiful kind. And she hated herself for it. She supposed that, yes, it would be nice to be _good_ at something, even if it wasn't at what she might want to be at.

_What am I here for? Why do I exist? Am I to serve some higher purpose? Or am I just 'holding the fort' for someone?_

The ringing bell snapped her out of her thoughts, and she scrabbled to pick up her stuff, studiously ignoring the sympathetic look on Tory's face. What was it for, anyways? She hoped she hadn't failed the latest test, because demons and the impact they had on society were steadily becoming her most favorite topic, period. It was just so _cool_.

When she got on the bus, she first noticed something was wrong when no Tara leaned over the seat to play with her hair a bit before yanking it, and no Lilith started voicing her thoughts out loud. Hmm… strange. They were nearly always on the bus, unless they were going straight to the Black Iris. Well, whatever. They had probably skipped.

The ride was spent in silence. Laurel made sure to take advantage of every minute of it, because who knows when an opportunity like this would land at her feet? A chance to read in peace, think without being mocked for it… well, she wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

When the bus had dropped her off at her stop, a strange chill crept up her spine, like the feeling of being watched, or the feeling of knowing something bad had happened. She shrugged it off – vampires might have been supposed to rely on their instincts, but hers had always been terrible. _Scratch another point._

But when she came across the enclave, she immediately wished she had trusted her feelings.

Her family's compound was… it was… it was _burning_. Real, honest-to-god, flames were consuming the houses, licking at the walls and eating at the roofs. The roar of the flames sounded distant in her ears as she stumbled past bodies, barely being able to take in the scene. Rosalia, her best lamia friend, dead, cleaved in two and staked through the heart. Kasago, the Japanese transfer student, beaten bloody with a yew club. Petra, the elderly grandmother-figure she adored, corpse burning, the smell of crispy flesh permeating the air. Thorne, sliced into tiny pieces with agonizing precision, and no chance of ever finding enough pieces for the corpse. Laurel lurched through the sea of body, torn between horror and nausea. After seeing little Aurelia's stabbed, burned, and mutilated toddler-sized corpse, she couldn't hold back, and started retching, vomiting at the disgustingly grisly picture the gruesome scene created.

_My god... who would do such an awful thing?_

And it _was_ awful – they had not only _assassinated_ the leaders of this enclave, they had also _massacred_ the others. No one had been spared.

_None but me. None but me._

She was sick until she finally ran out of contents in her stomach, and proceeded to dry heave. It was so ghastly, so sickening, she couldn't believe that someone could actually commit such horrifying acts right in front of everybody. In a daze, she staggered through all the dead vampires, the slaughtered Redferns and Greygroves and Brownstones and the other families represented here, heading for the center building, her home. She arrived quick enough to hear a pained cry, but not fast enough to prevent it.

Peeking in though the doorway, not wanting to be closer to the monster than she had to be, she watched as a slight figure stand over her father's slumped body, accompanied by Darach's and Lilith's. Tara – _Tara_ – was on her knees, hair tangled and bloody, begging for her life. With a slow deliberation similar only to those who have done things like this before and _enjoy_ them, the hunter – she was sure of it – stabbed her, quickly and efficiently. She gasped, not managing to hold it in on time. The figure slowly turned toward her.

Her heart caught in her throat. It… it couldn't be. But there really was no mistaking it – the soft, light brown hair, the snapping and fiery hazel-gold eyes, the crooked grin that slowly appeared as he looked toward her.

"Another one? And here I thought I had nabbed every last one of these fucking leeches."

He stalked over to the door, yanked it open, and – froze. His eyes widened, panic flooding them, as he took in her trembling figure and long black hair, her hate-filled eye resting upon him.

"L – Laurel?" Was his voice… shaking? Like he was unsure about something? Yeah, right – he was probably acting. Pretending, like he had pretended to be her friend, pretended to care for her. _As if_.

The silence between them stretched out, tension vibrating through the air. It felt like eternity, looking in his eyes, and seeing her self reflected in there, like two sides of a coin. One side showed a savage and furiously snarling ravenette, silver-sharpened – with just a hint of blue – eyes glaring, before she attacked with sharp, painfully poisoned nails aiming to rip him apart. _A monster_. The other side showed the same girl, but entirely different – long, shadowy locks tucked behind ears, a soft and wistful expression on her face, gazing on with sadness and regret in her blue-grey eyes as she sat on a wall, swinging her feet. _A person_. Right now, they were equally unfamiliar to her.

Ramiel shifted his eyes away, and the spell that had held their eyes together was broken. Everything about him hardened, and an edge appeared in his eye that had been absent when he was looking at her. As he walked away, three quiet words slit through the painful silence like particularly sharp knives, the sound resonating like echoes in the stillness of the blood-washed compound that tinted everything red.

"Tomorrow. Eleven PM."

He left, leaving her to slump against the wall and fall to a boneless heap onto the ground, not caring if her clothes were soaked in blood. Dark clouds loomed over her, but she paid them no mind

_Am I really this pathetic, that I'm not even worth killing? If I can't even bring myself to avenge my blood against an outsider and stranger, then why am I even here?_

The only thing that answered Laurel was the howling wind and heavy raindrops splattering her, mixing with the warm liquid sliding down her face. In the crimson colored village, all was silent except for her heavy breathing, and her piercing shriek of grief was answered only by the silence of the lifeless graveyard, filled with corpses and smoking cinders. Lightning struck the trees as her world burned to ashes all around her.

**– **_watched_ **it** _burn_ **from** _her_ **pit** _of_ **ashes**** –**

It was the next night, and she met him on the pier for the last time. It was a calm night, and the peace seemed to mock them, ridicule all the turmoil that was stirring within them. Well, one of them, at least, because she had resigned herself to it. Accepted it, even, really. The soft breeze fluttered around them, rippling dark clothes and lifting stray strands of hair.

His dark eyes, onyx in the fading light, were wide and wild, a stark contrast to the rest of his body. The rest of him was all perfectly combed hair and immaculate black clothes, but the frightened eyes were the only things that gave away the turmoil inside of him.

"I'm sorry, Laurel. I have to do this. I have to. You understand, don't you?" He was almost pleading, like he was trying to convince himself. And he was searching her face, like he was desperate to see something, anything. Like he needed _her_ to tell him that he was doing the right thing.

She gave a bitter laugh, shaking her head. Head bowed, her long, raven black bangs fell in front of her down-turned face, shielding her silvery eye. She looked up, and he just barely managed to catch the sight of a lone teardrop sliding down her face, glittering in the moonlight. Letting out a small raspy breath, she almost sighed.

The sudden night breeze whipped her hair around, and he saw her right eye at last, the one she always kept hidden. Her lips formed a macabre mockery of a smile of twisted relief as she looked him dead in the eye, silver-green and silver-blue meeting shadowy hazel for the first time in the months they had known each other.

"Just do your damn job, Ramiel."

_Because maybe, in death, I'll find the reason why I existed._

_**– and never rose again –**_

_

* * *

_

Well, that's the fourth, my horror story. Anyone notice these are getting progressively longer? I swear, this is what, 4,500 words? *shakes head*

_Yeah, this one really isn't about soulmates, but they've never really done anything that could make them aware of this fact. Most of these are friendships/encounters between people who might be soulmates. Some discover it, some don't. It's... complicated, but... that's life. Sorry, for those of you who are completely confuzzled. I wrote all these parts on separate nights, so. Yeah._

_Either way, thanks for the reviews, darlings. They really make my day. Please continue the streak!_

_~Hallow_


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